ZIMBABWE WHITES PUT PAST BEHIND

Howard Witt, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Ian Smith unfurled his gaunt frame from an easy chair and offered what sounded like an apology for the disarray in his sitting room, flush with fine vases, English furniture and tiny sculptures of smiling black villagers going about their daily tasks.

''I`m sorry, but I`m having an alarm system installed,'' explained the former prime minister of Rhodesia.

''When we call the police to come to this address, they don`t always hurry.''

In fact, it wasn`t an apology at all but yet another jab at the black government of Zimbabwe by the man who defied the world in a desperate fight to keep it from ever taking office.

Ten years after the end of a brutal civil war and the ratification by white voters of a new constitution that enfranchised blacks, established a black majority House and Assembly and changed the country`s name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Smith feels no need to apologize to anyone.

Instead, he spends his forced retirement holding court in his comfortable home in Harare`s posh diplomatic district, next door to the Cuban Embassy, deriding the failures of the new government and philosophizing about where things, as he sees them, went wrong.

''If people had just left us and South Africa alone, we would have been a lot better off,'' Smith, 71, mused last week. ''We had fantastic relations between black and white.''

About 100,000 whites are in Zimbabwe-down from 220,000 at independence in 1980-living alongside 8.5 million blacks. It`s not clear how many of them still share the beliefs of their former leader, including that blacks should never have been given the universal right to vote.

''There`s something wrong with a system where the most incompetent person has the same say as the most competent,'' Smith said. ''. . . Even for those who can read and write, (a parliamentary system) is a system of government that is foreign to them. They prefer a system based on tribalism.''

It is easy, however, to find many whites who do not share Smith`s beliefs.

One of them, David Hasluck, fought for Smith in the Rhodesian army. Now he is director of the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents the country`s largest farmers, most of them whites, in negotiations with the government.

''The vast majority of people in this country are black. They run the country. And that`s a good thing for Zimbabwe,'' Hasluck said. ''I can remember discussions in my family that things were getting out of hand because blacks were starting to walk on the pavement. But black people are now considered by the majority of whites to be important as well as equal.''

A decade after they lost their privileged place in a society forcibly skewed to their benefit, most white Rhodesians now truly seem to regard themselves as Zimbabweans.

Whites are still among the wealthiest Zimbabweans. The 4,500 white commercial farmers still control 30 percent of the country`s land, and produce most of the agricultural products for export.

Whites continue to live in well-kept suburbs on expansive estates. They can send their children to private schools. They can play squash at private clubs. The major difference is that now blacks can too.

Most important, whites suffered no retribution when Zimbabwe became independent. President Robert Mugabe stressed reconciliation in the new country and was careful not to scare away white business leaders and farmers. As a result, Zimbabwe is one of the only African countries that not only feeds itself but produces crops, cattle and tobacco for export.

And the capital city of Harare, far from sinking into decay like so many other post-independence African capitals, is a clean, flourishing city with wide, inviting avenues and pedestrians, black and white, who smile.

''There`s money to be made here, and whites are making money,'' said Michael Auret, a spokesman for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, a human rights monitoring group. ''There are not many whites who can say they are worse off now than 10 years ago.''

The white concerns that do exist center on Mugabe`s stated intention to transform Zimbabwe into a one-party state if his ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, emerges as the clear winner in last week`s parliamentary elections.

Much of Mugabe`s election rhetoric was devoted to bashing ''ugly, racist, terrorist'' whites who dared to support his political opponents-a direct reference to Smith`s Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe, which was doing just that.

Whites as well as blacks bristle at the government`s stiff controls on foreign exchange (there is a chronic shortage), which restrict the ability to take funds and profits out of the country.

There are periodic shortages of imported consumer goods-currently shoe polish and matches-and income taxes run as high as 60 percent.

Whites were distressed as well when Mugabe and his ministers implied that land might be taken from white farmers and allocated to black farmworkers, a fulfillment of a longstanding campaign promise to redistribute the country`s land more equitably.

But whites say they are trying to keep some perspective and to judge Mugabe on his actions, rather than his words.

''I am much less concerned than I have ever been, despite the high profile of rhetoric,'' Hasluck said. ''We have 10 years` experience of this government to go on. We are still here, after all.''